Foz do Iguaçu

It was eight in the morning, grey and rainy, and we had no idea where the hell we were or where to go from there. yes, we were in Foz do Iguaçu, but little did we know that that was the equivalent to El Paso with a Juarez on the Argentinian side and on the Paraguayan side. it was a three way international intersection and to think, I just thought it was some quaint small, tourist city… Well, what does one do when they first enter a strange and foreign city wanting to do only tourist activities? TOURISM OFFICE! We actually just asked them for a map of the city and the name of some of the cheapest hostels/hotels in the city. A taxi cab later and we were being welcomed into a small yet nice hostel. We were told that we could each get a bed for R$24 a person, dinner for $10 and a ride to the Iguaçu falls for R$40. sounded good to me so we took it. First things first however, shower time… Half an hour after arriving at the Hostel and saying we wanted two beds however, they told us that someone just canceled and we could have a regular room at a price a little more so we went with that. As we were planning our day (because sufficient sleep is never an option) we met two guys from the Netherlands who also had just arrived. The four of us decided to do the Brazilian side of the waterfalls. So the hostel can us transport there and we were off into what is most likely to be one of the most beautiful places known to man. We paid for our ticket into the park, bought ourselves raincoats (not that it mattered) and got onto the first bus available. We sat on the second story of a double decker bus as we entered the freezing cold and rainy park. After what seemed to be the first part of the Jurassic Park tour, we decided to go it alone by foot for a while. We started along this trail that pretty much went along a cliffside; think forest to our left, hundreds of monstrous waterfalls to our right and wild animals picking at the remains of tourist snacks. When I think of big waterfalls, I think of those movies with Niagara falls in them; extremely tall, lots of water and well, the ability to see them all from one place. This was not the case… When we first saw them, well it seemed surreal they way they were leveled. It seemed as if there were waterfalls stretching for miles all around an island of waterfalls themselves, not to sure how to explain it but it just didn't seem real… As we continued along this trail, we saw different angles of the falls, each showing a new set or a different MC Esher portrayal of them. At the end of the trail, There was a catwalk pretty much into the middle of a giant set of waterfalls. Going out on it was wetter than taking a shower. Surround on all sides by waterfalls, the R$5 trench coat I bought at the entrance of the park started showing it's R$5-ness. I could over bare about 10 minutes out there before deciding to come back out, completely drenched. As the four of us took in all we could of one of these natural modern wonders, I'm sure we all knew that beating this, was not going to ever be an easy task. We took the "Panoramic" elevator to the top for a last angle of the falls and decided to eat lunch. After lunch, we took one final quick look and got back on a bus to head back to the entrance of the park. After getting back to the hostel, the first logical idea was steaming hot shower followed closely by a beer and a smoke. As sleep was running a bit hard to find these days, Susan took a nap while I played around on the internet for a little bit. At around 8p.m. dinner was ready, a nice little, almost family like barbecue. After eating out fill, Susan and I decided to watch Alice in Wonderland and then to no surprise, the party began. I played pool, watched them play soccer on the PS3, drank beer and caipirinhas, and told tales of our adventures around the world. As a first time backpacker staying in a hostel, I couldn't of dreamt of a better way to spend my time, this is truly what a vacation should be for me. As three rolled around, the party started to die, so I went back to the room and watched some South Park until five with Susan.

It's Sunday, the 18th when I wake up around 10a.m. Susan is still sleeping as I let myself our of the room to go get some breakfast. At 11 I wake her up so that we can check out of the hostel. Realizing that all of our cloths are either soaking wet or already dirty, our money is starting to run low and our energy lower, we decide to start on our way back to São João. So, like any journey, we start at the bus station. The people at the hostel gave us a ride there and then we bought our tickets to São Paulo which was leaving about 30min later. So we sit down, drink a coffee, play some cards and then head to the bus when it arrives. This was precisely the moment that i realized that here in Brazil, no matter how well planned out you trip is, or how good your intentions may be, you can always expect the unexpected. They bus driver didn't let me on the bus because I didn't have a visa. Inside I laughed a little at the irony, it would of been too easy and too perfect a trip without getting mugged or loosing luggage or at least being delayed a day in some random city… So here I am, on the border of three South American countries and there telling me I'm an illegal immigrant. Well, on the bright, they didn't deport me on the spot, they just told me that I couldn't get on the bus. After getting our money back for the bus ticket (Susan was nice enough to stay with me) we did a little bit of quick thinking. It was a Sunday afternoon so everything was closed or was closing, including the federal police office. There was no American consulate in the city, so with a little help from a taxi driver, we headed for Paraguay. Right as we were about to cross the bridge and head into Paraguay, we took a right turn and headed to the police station. The idea was to get the police on the border crossing to eater give me a visa or temporary residency to get me at least back to São João. So after an hour of waiting and expelling my situation, they pretty much just wrote a note on a pice of paper telling me to show this to the bus driver and anyone else that asked until i could get to quiz de fora to get the actual visa papers. Because I've gotten used to this whole "always expect to be at least three hours late for everything", I had the bus times written down for the next 12 hours. The next one didn't come for another four hours so we went to the mall. Susan, being the woman that she is, loved it and went on a shopping spree while I drank an espresso. When it was getting to be that time, we headed back to the bus station, bought our tickets and headed to São Paulo (showing my 'super formal' note from the police to the bus driver this time) So we got to Sao paulo around 9am after a good 15 hours of bus, none of which i slept for.we got into Sao Paulo and tried finding when the next bus to Sao Joao was but to no avail. after like half an hour of searching the bus station, I began to notice something strange, none of the busses there were even going to Minas (the state in which Sao Joao is in). So I asked information where I could get the tickets. they told me to go to the other bus station in the city. two metros later, we found ourselves in another huge bus station. At least they had tickets to Sao Joao, we just had to wait seven hours for the next bus. This time however, it was my turn to go on the shopping spree. Across the highway from the bus station, there was a nice 6 story mall and so to kill a little time, we went there. I got a few extra souvenirs, some sandals and some more coffee and before we knew it, back on the bus, the last one of our adventure, back to Sao Joao. seven hours later, we arrived. Called a taxi for Susan and I walked home, getting there at around 330am. I checked my email, and went to bed.

Passos

We arrived about forty-five minutes late, nothing new… As we stood up in the bus to file out of the bus, we saw what seemed to be our welcoming party; Pedro, Pedrinho and a few other people I didn't know. We all got into his car and took off to his place which was only about ten minutes away. It was about one in the morning when we got to his place. Both Susan and myself were very ready for bed seeing how we'd been up since 630 in the morning, partly with a hangover from the night before, and the daily drinking routine of the what I've come to understand as the Brazilian lifestyle. Unfortunately (or fortunately) however, when we arrived, there were probably about thirty people parting at his house. Pedro said that they were commemorating his birthday that night because He wasn't going to be in town the day he actually turned 23. And so, as I've become so accustomed to this, the first thing I did was drop off my backpack and grab a beer. Like most parties with Pedro, the bulk of it consisted of playing songs on the guitar and everyone singing for hours on end. We finally went to bed around 3:30 in the morning as I could barley stay awake any longer.

The following day was easy enough, especially because of the wonderful nine hours of sleep. We woke up, ate some leftovers from the night before and took off. After the usual errands we needed to do like checking times of busses to the next location and pulling out money from the bank, we headed downtown. We walked around a little and went to a nice little cafe. As we walked the streets, we soon noticed that our friend Pedro pretty much knew half the population of this 130,000 habitant city. Making many stops to talk to old friends, Susan decided that she wanted to go off shopping so Pedro and I went to a bar for some beer while Susan shopped there downtown. Later that evening, we went to Pedro's godmother's house for some of the best meat I've had here in Brazil. This, of course, was shortly proceeded by going out to the bars. Getting home around four a.m., we went to bed with plans to wake up early.

I awoke to a bang on the door and the word: "WAKE!" in that familiar Brazilian accent around 1 in the afternoon. Coming out of the room I noticed a big spread of food on the table so I quickly woke Susan up to come eat. We ate(yet another wonderful meal in Passos), we had our coffee, and we decided what our plans were going to be for the day. Pitching R$10 each for gas money, we set off on a kind of mini-road trip within our road trip. 45 minuets from the city is a giant lake and around this lake there are many waterfalls. So we spent a few hours at one; putting out feet in the crystal clear water, rock climbing, skipping stones, and enjoying the general serenity of the place. following our day in the sun and water, we checked the dam. Damn, pretty massive I thought, I think it was probably the first dam I'd ever seen actually. We went to both sides, taking lots of pictures along the way and after the sun had set, we headed back to town. The nights' festivities included playing pool at a kind of trashy yet entertaining place where I learned how to play pool the way Brazilians do it. We went to bed relatively early (3:00a.m.) because we needed to wake up super early the following day. At 6:30a.m., I was already up, clothed, and drinking coffee. We had a kind of last breakfast with Pedro, his brother, and his dad while we packed up our stuff to go to the next place. At 7, we were at the bus station shaking hands and going our separate ways. Pedro was going back to São João for "Inverno Cultural" and Susan and I were heading to Foz do Iguaçu. At 7:10, the bus was off and we were on our way for our little than over 24 hour bus ride there.

The first stop was in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, arriving there around noon. We then waited in the bus station for about three hours for the bus to Iguaçu, sipping espresso and playing cards patiently. Then at three in the afternoon, we got on the bus for the longest bus trip I'd ever taken. kilometer after kilometer, mile after mile, hour after hour, we pressed on. Passing through who knows how many cities, taking breaks maybe once every four hours to stretch our feet and maybe have a snack. it was only after the sun had set and risen again that we had made it to our final destination.

Arcos

So the way I'm going to be posting these blogs is one post per city because the term day or night no longer has any meaning...

It's 7:10p.m. when the bus to Arcos arrives. We get on the bus armed with a backpack, a suitcase and enough cash to get us anywhere in a 1000 km radius in Brazil by bus. After the 5 hour bus ride, we finally arrive and are greeted by Jose in his small 30k people city. As we walk down what seemed to be there main street, he tells us that we won't be able to stay at his place for lack of furnishings and suggests a hotel for us to stay in. As we get settled in, we find that we need a bottle opener so Jose goes to his place (15min away) while Susan and I walk in the opposite direction(15min away) to buy another bottle of wine, some chips, and a bottle of water. It's around 1:30a.m. When we all finally get back to the hotel with all of our party supplies. We drink good (and bad) wine as we talk about the perks and downsides of being an American in Brazil. We talk about funny experiences, shitty times, plans for the future and how peach wine has too much sugar in it and that gas stations need better wine selections. At around 330 in the morning, Jose takes off to his place for the night seeing how we were all going to wake up quite early the following day.

The alarm sounded at around 745 in the morning, not fun when you stayed up until 3 drinking wine the previous night. I quickly smoke a cigarette as fast as possible so that the nicotine will at least sustain my consciousness until I can get my hands on some coffee or some other kind of natural or artificial stimulant. At about 830 in the morning, Jose joins us for breakfast telling us how his first class of the day was. We eat a feast of breads, cheeses, juices, coffees, hams, and I almost ate an entire papaya. The first item on the schedule was to figure out how we were going to get to the next city. So we head to the bus station and get an idea of when the busses were and there cost. We then go to CCAA, the place where Jose teaches English. We meet the staff and hold a conversation class with one of the students. Susan and I leave a little early because we need to check out of our hotel,(regardless of weather or not we stayed another night didn't matter, we were going to at the very least change hotels) on the way, we see Nayara, one of our friends from São João. We "command" her to join us to the hotel for check out. We pack our bags, pay the bill and head back uptown. We meet up with Jose and the four of us go out for lunch. After lunch, we go to the gas station to start drinking (yes, in the middle of the day) We go through something like 10 beers or something and then head back to the bus station to get everything down for sure. We end up buying our ticket for that night to a city called Formiga and then from Formiga, we would go to Passos, the city where my friend Pedro lives. After getting everything set and paid for, Nayara leaves to go back home and Jose, Susan and I start heading in the direction of Jose's place. Along the way, we buy another two bottles of wine, some bread, some cheese, and I stop at a LAN house(almost an internet cafe) to send pedro an email that we would most likely be there around midnight or one in the morning that night. We get to Jose's place, pop open a bottle and start munchin, reading quotes from On The Road. How fitting I thought to myself… We then head back to the bus station and wait to catch our bus. So the way that this bus trip was going to work was a bit awkward… We were to take the first bus and get off about an hour later at this gas station outside of the city of Formiga and wait for about 2 hours for the next bus to come. When it came, we were supposed to flag it down or else it wouldn't stop and then it would take us directly to Passos. Well, unfortunately, as any human being would be, we were a bit tired from having drank all afternoon and only getting a few hours of sleep the night before and so we fell asleep on the bus. Even though I told the bus driver twice that we needed to get off at that stop, apparently we missed it and ended up the middle of Formiga at 9 at night. One of the things I will defiantly miss about Brazil is how friendly and helping the people are here. As I wake up in the bus and ask where we were and if we had gone too far, two other people realized my situation, after I got done talking to the bus driver, they told me that all I would need to do is to wait for one of the city buses named for that place and it would take me there before my second bus. One of them decided that she would wait with us to make sure that we get the right one. As we waited, she told me that she was a law major and she had been visiting a Japanese friend of here's in Arcos. She also talked about the best places in the south of Brazil were to go if we had the time to check them out. So we got on the bus, got to this extremely remote gas station, waited for another hour, flagged down the bus and we were off to Passos.

Preparation

It's been some time since I last wrote… There's many things that have happened in the past few months… I've finished school, two new americans have come to São João, and I've decided to tour Brazil one last time before I go back to the states. I find it interesting that overtime that I preemptively write for my blog, I'm sitting in a bus between some town in one place and an exotic city in another; today, I'm on my way to Iguaçu. I guess maybe, like the rest of my blogs, I'll start at the beginning, I'll start from São joão.

it's a Friday night tonight. Most Friday nights are full of parties and going to the bar or drinking in the streets, especially these days as the two new Americans (Kayla and David) have come to stay in the same house as me. This Friday night however is a little different, I decide to try to keep it quite for the next 432 hours of my life will be almost excessively intense (Not to mention I have to stay up until 4:30 a.m. to pick up yet another American(Jose) format he bus station). David, Diego, and I go out for a few drinks at the bar but after a few hours they realize that drinking and staying up just wasn't going to happen for them: they crash out, I watch the first half of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When I arrive at the bus station (4:45 a.m. July 17) I find it, well I guess after being here a year, not surprisingly weird anymore. The crazy woman outside talking to herself and walking in circles, the taxi guys kind of snickering to themselves about who knows what. You see some families half asleep eater waiting for there bus to go home or waiting for loved ones to return; I take a seat and begin to ponder how long Jose will be late this morning or if he had already come and just walked to my place. After a good 45 minutes of sitting, standing, walking around, smoking, breathing, and waiting, he finally arrives. With a goofy grin on his face, we set off back to my place by foot. We catch up, talking politics and social life. At around 6ish, when the sun is starting to rise, we go to bed to await the following day.

I wake up to Jose introducing himself to David in the room next to mine. Like usual, the first thing that they want to do is go out to eat and so we take off to Pantanal, one of my personal favorite restaurants in the city. Afterwards, they decide to watch the soccer game, I go see Susan. We all meet back up around 6 to commence the festivities of the night. First things first, clean the kitchen, followed closely by the purchase of 24 600ml beers, Set up table, align cups, pop bottles, and our beer pong night had commenced! For the second time playing beer pong in Brazil, i thought I did decently, Jose and I won the first round, David and Kayla won the second. Pong was then proceeded by some kings, and then by some asshole. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were flying through the beer. we got to one bottle left when David decided to go to bed, so the rest of us (now including Diego) went out to a bar. Had a shot of cachaça, a beer and a burger and called it a night.

Sunday
Woke up, went out to Açai with an english teacher that I've been teaching, and then went to the bar to meet with Jose and Kayla. It was the World cup final and Jose was also leaving today right after the game.
This is where I'm going to stop and take a little brake to explain some things.
today is the 11th of July, Susan and I leave the 27th of July back to the states. that gives us a little over three weeks to do everything that we possibly can in Brazil. So far what had been planed was we would leave a few days early to Rio with Susan's host family and then they would take us to the airport from there. Also, it turned out that Jose was going to be in Rio that preceding week also so if possible, we and/or I would go a little early to stay with him and the hang out in the city some more. So that took care of the last week, we had two more weeks to plan for. For the past two or three months, I'd been scoping out cities, beaches, attractions, contacts with whom I could stay with or a kind of list of events that I'd like to participate in before I go. a kind of road trip if you will. Well it was a Sunday and Jose was leaving back to his home town in Arcos and I was adventure thirsty so I figured, fuck it, this end of year escapade could start today.
So, back to where I was before, I meet up with Kayla and Jose at about 330 when the game is starting, they tell me David is on his way and asked where Susan was. I tell them I'll go find her. I grab the first mototaxi I find and book over to the other side of town. I tell Susan that We should take advantage of Jose leaving tonight and go with him to his town for the night, after a little encouragement, she agrees. I leave her to pack and finish the things she was doing to go back to the game. I get to the bar at the end of the first half. I order a beer and a soup which don't get served to me until overtime. I end up leaving a little early because I haven't packed yet and we're leaving in about an hour. I get home and as time ticks away, Susan and I come to realize that a few hours of preparation for a 2 week long trip just isn't enough so we decide to go exactly 24 hours later. the "American click" comes back format the bar, Jose grabs his stuff and says goodbye to everyone and I take him to the bus station. I tell him I'll see him the following day the be prepared to party hardy. I head back to the house, make some popcorn, watch some movies and call it a night.

Monday

The first thing that I feel like doing is some 3D so pretty much immediately after waking up, I head to a nearby cafe, set up my computer, order the usual(medium expresso & orange juice) and work on creating wind and gravity dynamics for a project that I'd been working on for the past few weeks. At around 4 in the PM, I head home to start packing and at about 530ish, I actually start packing. Talking to Susan over Skype the entire time, we coordinate whose bringing what and what we need to be able to wake up in a different city everyday for the next two weeks. at 6, I leave the house, buy a bottle of wine and head to the bus station. I buy the tickets, meet with Susan, we grab some food, hop on to the bus, and the adventure commences.